Sunday, 9 July 2006

Due to some very late planning and complete disorganisation on my part, Ed Sykes and I decided to make a T-shirt for our friend Jarkko Lapinlampi.
We had a picture of him in his martial arts outfit that we wanted to put on a shirt. To do a proper job, we decided to do proper silk screen printing, which neither of us had ever done before. We found an art shop in Covent Garden for the supplies. Ed bought T-shirts and I printed out the silhouette of the picture on to transparencies. It was getting close to 6pm on Friday night. I left the office for the art shop, leaving the directions at work. Nevertheless, with the help of some local people we got to the shop with a comfortable ten minutes to spare before it closed. We grabbed the supplies and went home, where I waited for Ed to arrive with the T-shirts.
In the next 8 hours, armed with only pizza and beer to assist us, we completed this fine piece of art.

It was a great night, and it confirms that you need the pressure of an imminent deadline to complete any creative task.

Tuesday, 4 July 2006

I had the opportunity to give a presentation at the EuroPython conference at the Cern Institute. So Kate and I decided to spend the weekend before the conference visiting Geneva.

On Saturday we walked all over town visiting old churches and buildings, and had a lovely lunch in an open restaurant under a huge tree.

On the second day we explored Lake Geneva. We walked along the shore, the weather was gorgeous, eagles flying over our heads, or at least some bird of prey. In the evening we had a lovely dinner at a little restaurant by the water. We sat outside and suddenly a bunch of teenagers came and stole money from the table next to us. The waiter and I chased them down the street. Although we didn't get the money back, the waiter gave us a free bottle of wine.

The next day we took a boat trip on a paddle steamer to a little French town further up the lake. It was beautiful little town, which had a flower festival on, but it was crowded with people. We spent the entire afternoon there and got more sunburned, took the steamer back, drinking refreshing white wine.

Kate left early Monday, and I went on to my conference. I hardly knew anyone there, but it was fun, especially being able to give a presentation.